Education

[Tom]

Teaching is the second oldest profession. So, it should be mature by now and teachers should know what works and what doesn't, but they don't have a clue. If they did, they wouldn't be changing how its done every couple of years. I can't think of any other profession that continually re-invents its processes every couple of years and still accomplish what its suppose to do.

PB is right about how great the Kahn academy is. So, why doesn't the school system adopt its methodologies? The US Air force teaches their students how to do one of the most difficult jobs ever. When they set up their teaching program they did not borrow anything from the public school system, they created one that works. But the public school systems will never look at what they are doing right and incorporate their successful programs.

I am not a fan of unions, but I don't think they are the biggest problem. I see that almost everyone involved in the public education system are 100% the product of the education system. Very few of them have ever worked and succeeded in any other field. Most teachers spend 16+ years going to public schools and then the rest of their working years teaching in public schools. They have no frame of reference from real life.

Most teachers I know busted their asses to get through school and many haven't been in the public education system their whole lives either. I have a friend who is a city firefighter that teaches. I know another guy who was working in a non profit agency as a FASD worker who is in college right now to become a teacher and he is in his early 40s. I personally know several teachers who got into the profession much later than what you are describing. One of my friends is a mountain bike instructor who planted trees for several seasons after high school prior to getting into teaching. I know a teacher who fights fire in the summer time on mountain slopes to supplement his income. A "frame of reference from real life" is how I would describe most of the teachers I know, and I have worked with a bunch.

Glad to hear about your friends. Do you think they are better teachers than those that have no outside experience?

[stoneaxe]

There are plenty of great teachers, most of them go into it with high ideals and most keep them. But it doesn't take many to screw things up. We need to clean them out. Unlikely, but that would actually be the easy part. I think most of the brunt of this is on parents and the fact that we have an unprecedented number of single parents, mostly Mom's. Combine parents that either don't give a shit, etc.. with single parents stretched to the max and you have a large segment of our population....especially in the inner cities.....add in things like the need to support 38 languages in a school and the bureaucratic BS and all the other stupidity we see and have been discussing here and its a recipe for disaster. You have a huge number of kids that like their parents don't care. All of that going on and teachers still have to find a way to reach them all?

Speaking of academic experimentation? What kind of fool thinks its a good idea to have open campus for 15-18 year olds? We could come and go as we pleased. ...and discipline? I cut last two periods almost every day my sophomore year....zero consequences. I actually passed one of the classes. The education I got in HS sucked only because I screwed off though. I had some good teachers, if I had taken a class with one teacher earlier I would have done much better I think. I exceled in the classes I liked, all the sciences, got bored in English, didn't care for math. I will say guidance was non-existent, the "guidance dept" didn't guide. My folks had already gone through 4 kids and didn't really push. I was an inner city punk. My senior year I was taking an advanced biology class and the teacher just after the beginning of the 2nd semester pulled me aside. Mr's Nelson was a rather gruff but likeable and a great teacher. She looked kind of like a bulldog with a perm and hornrim glasses. "Babcock...what the hell have you done to yourself? I had planned to give you a scholarship to Tufts but you're just barely graduating....I thought you had to be one of the top students  in your class, how the hell did you do this? Didn't you know how important this is?" I had a sudden realization of just how stupid I had been and was so embarrassed all I could do was stand there slack jawed.

My daughters both got reasonable educations in the local public schools. But only because we were there the whole way. When my oldest daughter was showing some signs of having a hard time reading. We got her a tutor over the summer. By summers end she was reading beyond her peers. We used all kinds of opportunities to teach lessons. The tree farm I started when they were little was as much about teaching them the value of hard work as anything....the name of the tree farm? College Fund Tree Farm. Teaching your children the fundamentals and giving them the raw material to work with is our job as parents. There are far too many that simply don't do that job. A love of reading is the most fundamental skill we can give them. Many of these parents can hardly read themselves.

[spookini]

Most of the teachers will get 8 weeks off for summer 
Don't get me wrong. I love our kids teachers. I think they deserve paid time off, which they get.

I think it's incorrect to say that teachers get paid summers off.  I believe they are paid from the 1st day of school, to the last.  During the summer, they don't get a paycheck.
They are off bc the kids are not there.  Are you proposing that kids oughta be in school 365/yr?? 

TallD, I thought you were going to end your story by saying, "my kids' teachers are bi-lingual, it's amazing, they oughta be getting paid more!"  Didn't you says that bi-lingual skills look good on any job application?  ... 
I do think it's a bit odd that US social studies would be taught in a foreign language.  Just seems so ....wrong. 

[lucabrasi]

Teaching is the second oldest profession. So, it should be mature by now and teachers should know what works and what doesn't, but they don't have a clue. If they did, they wouldn't be changing how its done every couple of years. I can't think of any other profession that continually re-invents its processes every couple of years and still accomplish what its suppose to do.

I would say that it isn't as much the teachers reinventing themselves as much as it is the system they are made to comply with. I would also argue that many........I don't know, professions? industries? trades? unions? are continually reinventing themselves.
Do good teachers figure out how to comply and do their own thing all at once and the.......lesser teachers just comply?

He actually starred in one of the top movies of the 90s, but now he's working with kids like me. 

Is that because you bring your board to school everyday? 

I think most of the brunt of this is on parents .........

absolutely

There are plenty of great teachers, most of them go into it with high ideals and most keep them. But it doesn't take many to screw things up. We need to clean them out. Unlikely, but that would actually be the easy part. I think most of the brunt of this is on parents and the fact that we have an unprecedented number of single parents, mostly Mom's. Combine parents that either don't give a shit, etc.. with single parents stretched to the max and you have a large segment of our population....especially in the inner cities.....add in things like the need to support 38 languages in a school and the bureaucratic BS and all the other stupidity we see and have been discussing here and its a recipe for disaster. You have a huge number of kids that like their parents don't care. All of that going on and teachers still have to find a way to reach them all?

That really says alot and  I don't think we can just slip in another model from somewhere else or change the current model and really expect overwhelming improvement the way things are now. Other things need improvement.....somehow.

I do think it's a bit odd that US social studies would be taught in a foreign language.  Just seems so ....wrong. 

Only the 1800's.

[PonoBill]

Most people probably know a good teacher, most people probably had some bad ones.

Like Tom's comments about the Air Force schools, I went through Navy Nuclear Power school which used teaching methods that had nothing to do with anything one might experience in public education. I learned more in a year than most colleges could possibly cram into someone in four. Most importantly I learned how to learn. All of my peers in that incredibly tough school were education failures. Guys who flunked out of college and joined the navy, but who tested well for intelligence. The dropout rate was miniscule. Competition was fierce--your ability to have any fun at all depended on being in the top of your class--comprehensive testing, every week, with everything you had previously learned as fair game. And you were only compared to people who had tested at a similar level when classes were first formed. I've never worked so hard, before or since. Before nuclear power school I flunked everything. After I aced everything. School is ridiculously easy once you know how to work at learning.

[robon]

Teaching is the second oldest profession. So, it should be mature by now and teachers should know what works and what doesn't, but they don't have a clue. If they did, they wouldn't be changing how its done every couple of years. I can't think of any other profession that continually re-invents its processes every couple of years and still accomplish what its suppose to do.

PB is right about how great the Kahn academy is. So, why doesn't the school system adopt its methodologies? The US Air force teaches their students how to do one of the most difficult jobs ever. When they set up their teaching program they did not borrow anything from the public school system, they created one that works. But the public school systems will never look at what they are doing right and incorporate their successful programs.

I am not a fan of unions, but I don't think they are the biggest problem. I see that almost everyone involved in the public education system are 100% the product of the education system. Very few of them have ever worked and succeeded in any other field. Most teachers spend 16+ years going to public schools and then the rest of their working years teaching in public schools. They have no frame of reference from real life.

Most teachers I know busted their asses to get through school and many haven't been in the public education system their whole lives either. I have a friend who is a city firefighter that teaches. I know another guy who was working in a non profit agency as a FASD worker who is in college right now to become a teacher and he is in his early 40s. I personally know several teachers who got into the profession much later than what you are describing. One of my friends is a mountain bike instructor who planted trees for several seasons after high school prior to getting into teaching. I know a teacher who fights fire in the summer time on mountain slopes to supplement his income. A "frame of reference from real life" is how I would describe most of the teachers I know, and I have worked with a bunch.

Glad to hear about your friends. Do you think they are better teachers than those that have no outside experience?

More than likely Tom, but you applied a blanket generalization about the vast majority of teachers which isn't necessarily true. In some cases, yes, in many others no. There is a lot of diversity in experiences out there for teachers and many other professions. Teachers tend to stay in the profession once they get there, but there is a wide variance in experiences along the way.

[TallDude]

Most of the teachers will get 8 weeks off for summer 
Don't get me wrong. I love our kids teachers. I think they deserve paid time off, which they get.

I think it's incorrect to say that teachers get paid summers off.  I believe they are paid from the 1st day of school, to the last.  During the summer, they don't get a paycheck.
They are off bc the kids are not there.  Are you proposing that kids oughta be in school 365/yr?? 

TallD, I thought you were going to end your story by saying, "my kids' teachers are bi-lingual, it's amazing, they oughta be getting paid more!"  Didn't you says that bi-lingual skills look good on any job application?  ... 
I do think it's a bit odd that US social studies would be taught in a foreign language.  Just seems so ....wrong. 

I think it's relative to an annual salary. They make X per year. Just subtract time off where ever.
And you're right, I should have said the truly fluent bi-lingual teachers should get more. They are awesome.
Broadening our social studies can only benefit the kids global futures. The whole dual-immersion program model is outside the box. There is a waiting list to get into the program. They now have two elementary schools in our district that are 100% immersion students. They also happen to be the two oldest and most run down schools in the district. All the kids going to the newest and highest tech schools are getting half the education. IMO. Their parents are proud of how nice their kids classrooms are. Impressive!

The dual-immersion kids are just on top of it. A friend of mine who used to be a high school principal in our district, said  the difference in the kids from non-immersion schools coming into high school is noticeable. The single language students struggle more in English than the immersion kids. The immersion kids also do better in any of the other foreign language classes. I'm so... glad we made the decision to have our kids go through that program. Some teachers should be paid more. They deserve it.

[feet]

A recent development in ed is the overwhelming amount of standardized testing that is being administered.  In NJ, we just finished implementing our first round of a nationally known test that rhymes with dark. We've been told not to talk about it online, with students, or to our mothers. It's a multi-million dollar test that was created by an "education company" and was administered in about 10 states.

Last year, we spent 3 days testing.  This year we will spend more than 20 days administering the test.  Each district is doing it differently and mine did their best to mitigate the scheduling issues and the reduced time in the classroom.  As I understand it, its worse in other states.  The kids were compliant and got through round one but are quite upset that we will have a second round in a little over a month. 

I am in favor of collecting and using data to teach, but this seems to be a bit much. Time will tell if the powers that be make changes to scale this back, but when there is millions of dollars at stake, I don't know how likely that is.  I'd also say the jury is out on whether this will make any difference.

[Ichabod Spoonbill]

Feet, I'm with you on those tests. I'm in the next state over, and I have no problem discussing how terrible the tests are. Holy crap, what an abomination they are. What a blight on education.

Tom, there are a couple of problems with “paying good teachers more.” The first is that how do you determine a good teacher? Standardized test scores? Those are so flawed as to be statistically invalid. (See my comment above.) Observations? Those are frequently dog-and-pony shows. I know because I've put a few on myself.

The bigger problem is that it doesn't work well. It's been tried and the problem is that money isn't a very good motivator. It tends to divide staff, keeping them from doing the collaboration that makes the school better. There were other reasons too, but suffice to say, it isn't viable. What would be good idea is to pay teachers more who work with at-risk kids. Give them a bonus for getting into the trenches. But sadly teachers who work with that population are treated just the opposite. They are labeled failures because their students don't perform well on standardized tests. Many of them are at risk for losing their jobs because of this.

[eastbound]

follow the money--there are big corporate entities (like, pearson,say) that make big money designing and selling tests and curriculum to our public schools. and then there is the sorry state of our "democracy" where corporate entities have ridiculously outsized influence on our politicians.

now i believe in accountability, i believe in some test to insure standards are being met, and i even believe that the act and sat have important purposes, but beware of politicians and their heartfelt love for the students. and beware the privateer profiteers, who have no hands-on knowledge of teaching and running schools, who claim to want to improve our school system, and do better by our children.

our schools need fixing, and we need to strive to improve our system, but we need to take care that education is a bit pot of gold to many, and they want at it and will campaign to get at it in disingenuous ways.

[SeaMe]

I think it's incorrect to say that teachers get paid summers off.  I believe they are paid from the 1st day of school, to the last.  During the summer, they don't get a paycheck.
They are off bc the kids are not there.  Are you proposing that kids oughta be in school 365/yr?? 

In NYS teachers' pay for ten months is spread out over twelve months, so that "8-week paid vacation" really isn't a paid vacation, they're receiving money that was withheld from earlier checks.

[SUP Leave]

More great replies going through this thread.

The comments regarding teachers who have some outside experience is really good, and true. That is true of most professions. I am a civil engineer, and a new engineer who has spent his summers doing construction or even remodeled a bathroom is way better than someone who just went through college and knows how to run all of the newest engineering software. I have an intern right now, and a common question for him is "Yeah, it looks ok, but how would you actually put that together?" and he is absolutely clueless about the mechanics of construction.

When I worked as a Nuclear Engineer for the Navy, a Naval Senior Chief looked at me one day and said "Any civilian white hat who sets foot in this reactor room and hasn't served 4 years in my Navy is nothing but an overpaid clerk to me!" As a young guy, fresh out of college with a degree it took me a while to see what he meant, but it was all too true. Even though my hard-hat was white I got lost on just about every aircraft carrier I worked on.

Perspective is everything and I appreciate what Ichabod Spoon is giving us here. The thoughts on teacher salary are very interesting. I also agree, working with the disruptive kids should get you a higher pay scale. Most people get hazard pay and these folks who are willing to do this should get it as well.

[PonoBill]

I've been thinking about this issue a lot, and I realized I'd suckered myself into talking about doing a better job of education as it currently is structured. I think that's a waste of time, resources, and the minds of kids. Eastbounds comments about "memorizing the multiplication tables" reminded me of how irrelevant typical education is today. As practiced, education stifles creativity and critical thinking. Kills it dead by the time students reach college. We teach people how to pass tests, which makes the political interest in testing today even more heinous. There's a reason why great leaders of great companies almost all come from a strange educational background--they didn't get their creativity killed.

School curricula is built around serving the needs of industry circa 1900, the beginning of the industrial revolution. It hasn't really changed since then. Lots of wobbling around, and a few airy-fairy experiments, but the core is academic subjects and everything else is peripheral.

We're trying to outfit kids who were born six years ago to be leaders and constructive citizens of this country starting about 2030 with increasing capability and responsibility through at least 2070. We can't foresee what the world will look like in 2020. But absent an apocalypse, memorizing the multiplication tables has nothing to do with being successful then.

The reason I'm so interested in Kahn academy and other online education capabilities is that it enables people to study what they choose, learn rapidly, retain what they learn. and go at the pace that suits them. I think that's the future of education, and the current structure of teachers, unions, politicians, and everyone who makes their living from the antiquated, increasingly irrelevant education system will resist that as strongly as they can.

Kahn Academy is free. Supported mainly by the Gates foundation. If you aren't pushing your kids at it, and using it yourself, you're missing out on a spectacular resource.

[longboarder1973]

I am a  southern California public teacher...high school science and one other class....

Stand Up Paddle PE.

I am fortunate to do something I love and teach new kids our favorite sport! 

Some people may think it is a waste of money having classes like SUP PE, but I see it as giving students a class to look forward to and be excited about.  I also will talk about local weather conditions, health, water safety, oceanography and a bunch of other topics while we are paddling (lots of teachable moments).

Great discussion and great thread!

[standuped]